


The Love of Reading

by yourlibrarian



Category: Fandom - Fandom, Multi-Fandom, Supernatural
Genre: Fanfiction, Gen, Meta, Reading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 05:53:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6841576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In response to a fic I read, discussion about how the process of reading text is as important as writing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Love of Reading

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted June 30, 2007

With so much fic flooding out daily in SPN there's no way I can read even a slice of it, so I've resorted to simply bookmarking recs in hope of one day catching up just on _those_. And people vary a great deal in how they rec. Sometimes there's quotes from the fic, sometimes a good bit of explanation about why it was enjoyed, and sometimes just a few words explaining what the fic's about or why it should be read. 

Thing is, I generally don't bother with summaries because I'm already there from a rec, and even the recs, unless they're quite brief, I don't bother reading either. This is mostly because I'm in a hurry and the first paragraph or so will tell me a lot about whether I want to continue. And today I was rather glad of this. I read a fic that I really liked (despite the glaring need for someone to proof it). I had no idea where it was going or what it was really about, but the story was like a road trip -- it was just interesting to sit back and travel along with it. (And it did have a good payoff). I should clarify that obviously a lot of stories in SPN are _about_ road trips, but the feel of this one was just right in that sense. It wasn't because it mimicked all the road trip elements either, but because it seemed like a mental road trip through Sam's head and memories. 

It also, I might add, had a contradictory feel to it. I felt, really, like I was reading original fiction. I even thought about reccing it to a non-fic reading friend of mine because I really liked the tone of it, but (aside from the errors which I knew would drive her crazy) it had too many references and placements in the SPN verse to really go over smoothly without all the "Huh?" road bumps. And I'm not sure how to put my finger on just what it was about it that didn't seem like the show to me. I wouldn't say either Sam or Dean was unusually out of character. In fact I thought the opening vignette was great. There was just this gauzy overlay on it which was very not like the series, but which seemed pulled from literary conventions.

This niggling feeling made me wonder about the change in mediums and how perhaps all visual medium fanfic is AU -- not because it doesn't closely follow canon but because the change in medium automatically imposes a different set of conventions on the story and characters. These work like a filter to subtly change who characters are and how the stories come across. I know that there has been debate and discussion about the S8 comics not really being "Buffy" versus the fact that comics simply tell stories differently and it still _is_ Buffy. I've always felt that it was about the preference of the individual reader, since whatever it was they related to in the TV series might or might not be in the comics at all. And by that I don't really mean character appearances or storylines but something more subtle?

In the current gender acafan debate [the latest exchange](http://community.livejournal.com/fandebate/2726.html#cutid1) explored issues about fanfic and canonicity that focused so much on writing, it seemed to me there wasn't enough discussion about the _reading_ side of it. Because talking about production inevitably channels discussions into certain avenues. A focus on the authors (both the originating author and the fanfic authors) becomes a discussion of hierarchy and canonicity, and reconfiguring the text to reflect (insert your bugaboo here) which has been left out of it and so on. There was some familiar discussion about how fanfic is a democratization of power, in that anyone can write a story and be an author, and they don't have to be vetted by institutionalized sources and all the baggage they bring. I agree with all of this to some degree. Except that while technically everyone _can_ write, in that they can produce written text, there are still many more people who can't do so with any effectiveness, or who don't want to, or don't really have anything to say. And it seems to me that fanfic is much more democratizing because people can _read_ in different ways and by using different forms. So focusing only on _production_ while celebrating reader-response theory seems a little, well, funny. 

On the one hand, I think fanfic exists in large quantities because it is a cheap form of production and its tools are ones that people use every day (especially if they're on the Internet). Compared to vids, or artwork, or full-length fan films, or various crafts, it requires very little knowledge to produce _something_ , very little money, and in some rather obvious cases, very little time. You can't get more democratic than that. And yet reading for entertainment is a _minority_ activity. 

I was thinking about this when reading an article about the history of Potterdom. The number of Harry Potter books sold pales in comparison to the number of viewers of films and television shows and sporting events. [Fiction reading is itself a gendered activity](https://www.arts.gov/publications/read-or-not-read-question-national-consequence-0) (at least in the U.S., I'm not up on other countries' statistics). So along with all the discussion about how women are the primary fanfic writers, it is less often discussed that they are also the primary fanfic readers. And I wonder if, along with co-opting elements of a story and characters that interest us, that fanfic writers/readers aren't also bringing those stories and characters into a medium that appeals to women more than men. Within a literary tradition, stories can be reshaped using certain conventions and tools that allow for the interiority and clear POV that some viewers actually crave when engaged with a visual story. To me, at least, fanfic is not a form of _competition_ , something which does seem to me to have gendered overtones in these acafan discussions, but something different.

This may not be true for everyone, obviously, (and this would differ for book-based fandoms). But I think that there may be something gendered in terms of the sort of deep reading about characters that people may want to bring to stories they enjoy. More than one person has described fanfic's focus (if not that of romance writing in general) as an effort to uncover the interior lives of men, especially as it relates to their primary relationships. This could be done in other ways than transferring a work to text. For example, as more on-demand viewing becomes possible and people are able to pause and rewatch visual stories, they could at least, bring a deeper reading to that medium that has always been easy to do with text. But this will still be limited by what is actually on the screen.

Because I think another thing that distinguishes writing is the way that fic can take its time getting to the point. If you do this in film, it gets very expensive. And just because you can write easily doesn't mean that the writing that ends up on the page shouldn't have a good reason for being there, merely that it can build more slowly and explore more broadly. If I see an object focused on in a visual medium, I am almost certain this object will prove important at some later point, otherwise it wouldn't be there (and sometimes I'm puzzled if it isn't). However a written passage, _especially_ in fanfic, can exist for just the experience rather than in setting something up later on. It is a "smell the roses" approach to telling a story. And what the reader brings to this can matter a great deal. With text a reader can go at their own pace. I notice when I read, I often stop and re-read things because I either want to make sure I've taken it all in, or because I want to play around with it in my mind. 

Which brings me back to the fic that started this post. I wasn't really worrying much what the story was about because I was being given roses and various interesting objects to examine as I read along. About halfway through I realized I was reading a love story (in small caps), but not one that had a clear progression either. At the end of the story it turns out there had been one, one that even the protagonist didn't quite realize. And I think it had much more impact exactly because I wasn't sure there'd really been a destination to reach, though once known, I saw it'd been headed there all along.


End file.
